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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27018355">hold my gaze (just once)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blepbean/pseuds/Blepbean'>Blepbean</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Check Please! (Webcomic)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, First Kiss, Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, dex is an awkward pining bisexual, hooking up with strangers to get over your crush, internalised biphobia, once again this isn't proofread or edited bc we die like men, p o e t r y, while nursey is a disaster pining bisexual</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 02:55:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,804</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27018355</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blepbean/pseuds/Blepbean</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nursey is pining onto Dex, who's straight. He goes on hookups and writes poetry to get over him, until that night in the party.</p>
<p>
  <i>And each time he sees him he sometimes forgets to breathe. Like right now, seeing him talk to a pretty girl on the other side of the room, with her blonde hair and leggings as she giggles at something that he says. She’s perfectly imperfect, a diamond with jaded ends. He gets home a bit too quickly, sweat on his forehead while he types something out in his phone.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>I want you to look at me and not her.</i>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Derek "Nursey" Nurse/William "Dex" Poindexter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>104</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>hold my gaze (just once)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i should be working on my wips but i just love these idiots aoijfoiajsdajdjslakdja</p>
<p>kudos, comments and feedback is appreciated</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Nursey always has a tiny notebook on him, scribbling down random lines of words that stems from his thoughts. He sometimes even writes on the receipts when he orders, sitting on the table with his black pen while he stares at the two guys behind the counter. The words on the receipt says:</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Jordan </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Your name is Jordan? </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>And you look at him like he’s stealing away your breath?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Max.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>His name is Max:</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Does Max know you’re into him? </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Does he know that he looks at you like you breathe life into the world?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Now the receipt sits at the trash can, all scrunched so many times. Nursey almost tore it shreds, but if he did it would’ve felt like he was permanently cutting off a limb, a part of himself that he isn’t quite ready to get rid of just yet. He isn’t ready to get rid of it, he’ll hang onto this </span>
  <em>
    <span>feeling</span>
  </em>
  <span>, this </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing </span>
  </em>
  <span>for just a little bit longer until he has to cut it away completely.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And that’s Pointdexter, an awkward ginger that breathes things into existence without meaning to. Him, with his messy hair when they have to wake up in the same room all groggy and tired. Him. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Him</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He has to share a room with him, Pointdexter. He’ll see him in almost </span>
  <em>
    <span>every </span>
  </em>
  <span>single point of his life, in practise, in their room, on their way to class.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Him.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And each time he sees him he sometimes forgets to breathe. Like right now, seeing him talk to a pretty girl on the other side of the room, with her blonde hair and leggings as she giggles at something that he says. She’s perfectly imperfect, a diamond with jaded ends. He gets home a bit too quickly, sweat on his forehead while he types something out in his phone.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I want you to look at me and not her</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He needs to let go of him, something to keep Dex off his mind. So he steps away from his friends during the parties in the Haus, he lets himself join the crowd full of sweaty bodies and bright lights. He drinks more than he should and lets himself blame the beer even though he doesn’t get drunk that easily. Nursey doesn’t look at Dex. He doesn’t think of him doing parties.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He lets himself get dragged away into his room by someone else, sometimes a girl that’s all giddy that her laughter fills his room when their bodies press close, or sometimes it’s a guy that presses his thighs a little too hard, making him smile as they’ll know it’ll leave a bruise in the morning. It doesn’t matter who it is.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And after he’s done all woozy and the euphoria goes away, bare chest cold against the air, the blaring music seeping through the walls. In the darkness he looks outside of the window, the moonlight turning his green eyes soft, sort of grey, like comfortable rainy days, staring out of the window. But something is missing, that warmth from a human body that comes from </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“You have a roommate?” She breaks the thin silence. Nursey looks over to her, they’re still wrapped up in the blankets. But it’s something that lovers too, lingering on the bed for hours until they fall asleep, people stay for a bit longer during hookups because they hope they'll forget all about this in the morning.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Like her.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah,” he hums, “sorry.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
    <br/>
  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She sits up, getting off his bunk bed and is already picking up her flannel jacket and her jeans, “it’s not that, I just… it was like your mind was somewhere else.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Him</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry--”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
    <br/>
  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“--I was too, I guess.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He shifts and sits at the edge of his bunk bed, looking at Dex's slippers, something he always wears when he goes to the bathroom, he remembers that. She finishes putting on her shoes, her eyeliner just a bit smudged.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I was trying to get my mind over my ex-girlfriend,” she says, fishing out her phone, scrolling through her notifications, it’s somehow casual, “how about you.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not getting my mind off someone.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She looks up at her phone and looks around the room, their shared space. Nursey’s desk where his eyes concentrate on his coding, eyebrows knitting, chin resting on his hands. He always looks at him from above when he’s working, Dex always in his little bubble of concentration.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s your roommate, isn’t it.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Silence.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“He’s… </span>
  <em>
    <span>straight</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She turns off her phone and looks at him with an apologetic smile. It’s like finding a familiar face in a crowd, like you already know the experiences that they went through without having to talk about it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, and she walks out of the door, leaving him in the darkness, the silence suffocating him along with his thoughts. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dex</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he says in the silence. Dex. Dex. Dex. He says it again and again until it is like white noise, like he’s getting used to saying his name. Dex.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t bother to write this, it’s already ingrained into his mind. It goes like this:</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Your name comes naturally to me like breathing</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe he can use that line in his weekly poetry submissions in his class.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nursey is sitting on his bed, typing away in his laptop, making bullet lines for his polished poetry piece. But the words don't come naturally to him like it usually does, it’s like something is blocking him off. It doesn’t feel like writers block, it’s something else, mind already wondering off.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Dex burst into the room, hair all messy, the sunlight coming through to make his eyes glow like melted gold. He looks so </span>
  <em>
    <span>soft</span>
  </em>
  <span>, so cute that he forgets how to properly breathe for a second.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Stop hooking up with people in </span>
  <em>
    <span>our</span>
  </em>
  <span> room!” He says, looking at Nursey with his eyebrows all knitted.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Dude it’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>chill</span>
  </em>
  <span>--”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“--It’s not </span>
  <em>
    <span>chill</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Derek Nurse,” he puts his hands on his waist, pressing his lips into a thin line, “like… gross!”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Why is it gross,” Nursey responds, chuckling a little bit, discarding his laptop to pay all of his attention to him, how his dimples show or how he sighs, he remembers all of these little things from him, “people have sex all the time.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
    <br/>
  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But not in shared rooms,” he huffs, “I had to find your used condom on the fucking bin, </span>
  <em>
    <span>two</span>
  </em>
  <span> used wet condoms. How many rounds did you even go.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He freezes.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Right, Dex doesn’t know he’s bi. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It wasn’t two rounds, Dex. It was with a </span>
  <em>
    <span>guy</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he says, trying to maintain his ‘chill’ compusture, but inside his mind is already going crazy, “I’m bi.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Wait…” Dex looks at the bin which they cleared out a while ago, then it all clicks, “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Oh</span>
  </em>
  <span>…”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Nursey goes back to writing, trying to hide his shaky hands behind the screen. He’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>terrified</span>
  </em>
  <span>, thinking about how scary it was back then, thinking about how during high school when he </span>
  <em>
    <span>forced </span>
  </em>
  <span>himself to not like more than girls, to not find that boy in one of his highschool science classes that wore glasses and always laughed at his jokes.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He had to build himself up from the ground after he came out in high school, putting his city behind him, Manhattan wasn’t always the best. There were times where everything that he built collapsed and he fell into moments where he couldn’t move, getting angry and mucking around with Dex to get his mind off it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Everyone in the Haus kind of </span>
  <em>
    <span>knew </span>
  </em>
  <span>that he wasn’t straight, this was the first time he’s saying it into existence. It’s a terrifying thing to announce out in the open of who you are. He looks at the words he’s typing, and it says:</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Build up everything only for it all to collapse down into rubble.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And there’s a couple of lines that’s only Dex’s name.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Dex. Dex. Dex. Dex. His name comes naturally to him.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Cool,” Dex says, tone sort of awkward, he doesn’t blame him.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He looks up from his laptop, forcing himself to look at </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He could write an entire book of how Dex’s breaths come, how his body moves with it, rising and falling like water. Nursey is an entire forest, and Dex to him is like water to the roots of his trees. It’s like he’s thirsty without him, but drowning whenever he’s with him.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s chill,” he says, voice a bit shaky, “I’ll uh...stop hooking up with people in </span>
  <em>
    <span>our</span>
  </em>
  <span> room, if you want. I can come to them instead I only do it to--”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
    <br/>
  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Force myself to stop thinking about you</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but he doesn’t say that last part.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Was that biphobic by any chance--”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“--No, I don’t think so,” Nursey says with a laugh. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And the corner of Dex’s lips curl into a soft smile. He’s seen it many times, when they score in Hockey or when he finally finishes a part of a program. Nursey memorised how it came, he could write about it without pausing, without any dictionaries to look up fancy words. It would come so </span>
  <em>
    <span>naturally </span>
  </em>
  <span>to him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After that talk they seem to flow naturally with one another, Dex putting off the idea of building his own hobbit hole in the whole room (which probably won’t work anyway). Their room slowly fills up with plants throughout the weeks, greenery taking over and brightening up the room, like a small forest. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Nursey even began to pick his underwear.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But this is, this feels like drowning to Nursey. Finding it hard to breathe sometimes when they go in early morning practise just because Dex is there, or how he sighs when he’s stuck on a code. They push and pull sometimes, when either of them is sick they give each other tea or a homemade soup that fills up the room with a sort of warmth. They laugh and joke all the time.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But this doesn’t feel like enough. In his tiny notebook that’s under his pillow, it says:</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I will have this, if this is all that you’ll give me.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Nothing more, nothing less.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“But I will always look at you from the other end of the room.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“And you fill up the whole space like you’re air.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I want you to hold my gaze, just once.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“And I think I will be content with that.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He should submit that to one of his poetry classes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They throw another party, but for the first time Nursey doesn’t feel like partying. He sits on the bean bag that they bought together. The lights are off, but the moonlight is enough to fill up the whole room with a soft glow. He scrolls through his phone with the plastic red cup, half full of beer.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>His notes are full of half assed poems, to one liner pieces to single words. It fills and fills and fills, and it all somehow goes back to </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Dex. Dex with his smiles and Dex with his ginger hair that he wants to run his hair through, feel every hair, every curl and he’ll memorise it. Dex. Him.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He’s tried to let his mind wander, to stop himself from thinking about </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span> by letting himself find comfort in other people’s bodies and their warmth. But it’s not Dex, they’re not Dex. They don’t hold that smile or have those dimples that he finds himself staring at. They don’t have natural chemistry out there on the ice, like they each other by the way they skate, what their next move is. When Dex moves ahead, Nursey is adjacent to him, ready to strike a puck into the goal.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>They have memorised each other like a poem.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The door squeaks open and Dex is there, just for a moment the life of the party spills into the room before it all disappears and it’s just the two of them in their own space, filling up with plants and some of Nursey’s poems that he hangs up every once in a while.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t feel like partying?” Nursey asks.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah…” he says, he sits on the bean bag, sighing, “I’m too tired, I guess. I think Jack is there with Bitty.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Can’t believe they’re together.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>A soft laughter fills the room. A part of Nursey wants something like that, to hold someone's hands and to mean the world to them. And that person is right there, he’ll never get that with Dex, he’ll have to accept that. A bitter pill to swallow and he’s the future of </span>
  <em>
    <span>them </span>
  </em>
  <span>leave, Dex won’t look at him like that.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>They’re just friends.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Dex breaks the silence, “hey Nursey.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Are with someone at the moment?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Something warm blossoms inside his chest, like flowers in a forest, but he needs to stop getting his hopes up.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” he says, “why?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>In the dim light he can make out the features of Dex, his cheeks a bit red, with freckles littering it. There’s something that traps them in this moment, everything melting away, including the music from the party and the walls. It’s just the two of them, it feels like magic.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I was just wondering… I guess.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Oh…</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Oh…..</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But he might be reading this wrong, he’s read </span>
  <em>
    <span>so </span>
  </em>
  <span>many things wrong in his life that leads to heartbreak and late night thoughts wondering whether someone will like him or not. He doesn’t do anything, he lets Dex lead the way, slowly.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Why were you wondering?” Nursey asks</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Because I thought that you would be with someone…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They stare at each other for a moment. Nursey wants to reach out and to trace his jawline, connect the freckles and make dumb constellations on his cheeks. He’ll write poems about him, perhaps publish it under an anonymous name and no one will know that he wants to kiss Dex’s name into his shoulder like a tattoo.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Their breaths sound loud, it’s terrifying in the silence.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He feels a hand on top of his, and it’s warm, a bit calloused from Dex helping around the house with his tools.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Dex--”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>He gets cut off with a kiss.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>His mind is underwater, trying to comprehend what’s happening because he’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>kissing </span>
  </em>
  <span>him. Dex is kissing him and he’s kissing back. He now knows what Dex’s lips feels like, soft, with a tinge of cheap beer and an undercurrent of the taste of mint from gum. He smiles into the kiss, Dex chewed bubblegum before this to make his breath smell nice.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t want to stop, he’s had a taste of </span>
  <em>
    <span>him </span>
  </em>
  <span>that he wanted to have for so long that he’s hungry for it, putting his hand on Dex’s neck and over the veins, the bumps, the grooves. All of those late night thoughts and stupid poetry and hookups to get over him, it all lead up to this.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>They pull away from the kiss, and they stare at each other like they figured out the equation to life.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I thought you had a girlfriend,” Nursey breathes out, “that girl from the street--”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“She was a friend…” Dex breathes out, “I’ve always </span>
  <em>
    <span>liked </span>
  </em>
  <span>you but I think I was too scared because I thought you wouldn’t like me…”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I was trying to get over you by hooking up…”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He feels so </span>
  <em>
    <span>dumb</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Dex grins at him, dimples showing, the corners of his lips curling.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh and I think I’m bi, also,” Dex blurs out of the view.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Cool, dude. I’m bi as well.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Silence.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Then more laughter. Then Dex is straddling on his lap and they’re half making out and half giggling to each other about how dumb they were and about not chasing their feelings. When he was a teenager, he always thought that he would never get this silly romance, hiding a part of himself and always shutting it out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And now, he’s kissing someone that he would want to spend the rest of his life and grow old. It’s strange how life works. He wants to talk to his younger self and say that it’s fine, that it’s okay to like more than girls.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>When they wake up in each other’s arm in Dex’s bed, a draft of the poems for his class sits on the floor, it says:</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I am beginning to memorise every part of you.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Every inch of your body and how you smell of pine.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“To the corners of your lips that I kissed last night.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m able to trace your body blindly.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“To describe it so effortlessly and so naturally.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m able to find you in death, or even at the end of the world, just by how you took space,”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Or how your chest rises and falls with every breath that comes.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I have lived a thousand lifetimes all through your simple touches and kisses.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
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